Michael Connelly - EchoPark

“This is off the record, Keisha. I’d like to know who has been supporting Rick O’Shea’s campaign.”

“O’Shea? Why?”

“I’ll tell you when I can tell you. I just need the information right now.”

“Why do you always do this to me, Harry?”

It was true. They had danced like this many times in the past. But their history was that Bosch was always true to his word when he said he would tell her when he could tell her. He hadn’t double-crossed her once. And so her protests were banter, a mere prequel to her doing what Bosch wanted her to do. That was part of the dance as well.

“You know why,” he said, playing his part. “Just help me out and there will be something for you when the time is right.”

“Someday I want to decide when the time is right. Hold on.”

She clicked off and was gone for almost a minute. As he waited Bosch stood over the spread of documents on the dining room table. He knew that he was spinning his wheels with this angle on O’Shea and Garland. They could not be touched at the moment. They were guarded by money and the law and the rules of evidence. Bosch knew the correct angle of investigation was to go at Raynard Waits. His job was to find him and break open the case.

“Okay,” Russell said after getting back on the line. “I have the most up-to-date filing. What do you want to know?”

“How up-to-date is up-to-date?”

“This was filed last week. Friday.”

“Who are his main contributors?”

“There’s nobody who is really big, if that is what you mean. He’s mostly running a grassroots campaign. Most of his contributors are fellow lawyers. Almost all of them.”

Bosch thought of the Century City law firm that handled things for the Garland family and had gotten the court orders preventing Bosch from questioning Anthony Garland about Marie Gesto without an attorney present. The head of the firm was Cecil Dobbs.

“Is one of those lawyers Cecil Dobbs?”

“Um… yes, C. C. Dobbs, Century City address. He gave a thousand.”

Bosch remembered the lawyer in his collection of videotaped interviews with Anthony Garland.

“What about Dennis Franks?”

“Franks, yes. A lot of people from that firm contributed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, according to election law, you give your home and work address when you make a contribution. Dobbs and Franks have a Century City work address and, let’s see, nine, ten, eleven other people gave the same address. They each gave a thousand, too. It’s probably all the lawyers in the same firm.”

“So thirteen thousand dollars from there. Is that it?”

“That’s it from there, yes.”

Bosch thought about whether to specifically ask if the name Garland was on the contributors list. He didn’t want her making phone calls or snooping around in his investigation.

“No big corporate contributors?”

“Nothing of major consequence. Why don’t you tell me what you are looking for, Harry? You can trust me.”

He decided to go for it.

“You have to hold on to it until you hear from me. No phone calls, no inquiries. You just sit on this, right?”

“Right, until I hear from you.”

“Garland. Thomas Rex Garland, Anthony Garland, anybody like that on there?”

“Mmmm, no. Isn’t Anthony Garland the kid you were looking at once for Marie Gesto?”

Bosch almost cursed out loud. He was hoping she wouldn’t make the connection. A decade earlier, when she was a hellion on the cop beat, she had come across a search warrant application he had filed in an effort to search Anthony Garland’s home. The application had been rejected for lack of probable cause but the filing was public record, and at the time, Russell, the ever industrious reporter, routinely combed through the search warrants at the courthouse. Bosch had talked her out of writing a story identifying the scion of the local oil family as a suspect in the Gesto murder but here it was a decade later and she remembered the name.

“You can’t do anything with this, Keisha,” he responded.

“What are you doing? Raynard Waits confessed to Gesto. Are you saying that was bullshit?”

“I’m not saying anything. I was simply curious about something, that’s all. Now, you cannot do anything with this. We have a deal. You sit on this until you hear from me.”

“You’re not my boss, Harry. How come you are talking to me like you’re my boss?”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t want you running off and going crazy on this. It could hurt what I’ve got going. We have a deal, right? You just said I can trust you.”

It was a long time before she answered.

“Yes, we have a deal. And, yes, you can trust me. But if this is going where I think you are going with it, I want updates and reports. I’m not just going to sit around waiting to hear from you after you get the full package put together. If I don’t hear from you, Harry, I’m going to get nervous. When I get nervous I do some crazy things, make some crazy phone calls.”

Bosch shook his head. He should never have made the call to her.

“I understand, Keisha,” he said. “You’ll be hearing from me.”

He closed the phone, wondering what fresh hell he might have just unleashed on earth and when it would come back to bite him. He trusted Russell but only to the limit he could trust any reporter. He finished his beer and went to the kitchen for another. As soon as he popped the top his phone buzzed.

It was Keisha Russell again.

“Harry, have you ever heard of GO! Industries?”

He had. GO! Industries was the current corporate titling of a company started eighty years earlier as Garland Oil Industries. The company had a logo in which the word GO! had wheels and was slanted forward to look as if it were a speeding car.

“What about it?” he responded.

“Headquartered downtown in the ARCO plaza. I count twelve employees of GO! making one-thousand-dollar contributions to O’Shea. How’s that?”

“That’s fine, Keisha. Thanks for calling back.”

“Did O’Shea take a payoff to put Gesto on Waits? Is that it?”

Bosch groaned into the phone.

“No, Keisha, that’s not what happened and that’s not what I am looking at. If you make any calls in this regard you will compromise what I am doing and could be putting yourself, me, and others in danger. Now would you please drop it until I can tell you exactly what is going on and when you can run with it?”

Once again she hesitated before answering, and it was in that space of silence that Bosch began to wonder if he could still trust her. Maybe her move from police to politics had changed something in her. Maybe, as with most who worked in the realm of politics, her sense of integrity had been sanded down by exposure to the world’s oldest profession: political whoring.

“Okay, Harry, I got it. I was just trying to help. But you remember what I said. I want to hear from you. Soon!”

“You will, Keisha. Good night.”

He closed the phone and tried to shake off his concerns about the reporter. He thought about the information he had gotten from her. Between GO! and the law firm of Cecil Dobbs, O’Shea had received at least twenty-five thousand in campaign contributions from people who could be directly tied to the Garlands. It was spread out and legal, but nevertheless, it was a strong indication that Bosch was on the right track.

He felt a satisfying tug in his guts. He had something to work with now. He just had to find the right angle from which to work it. He went to the table in the dining room and looked at the array of police reports and records spread out in front of him. He picked up the file marked WAITS-BACKGROUND and started to read.